Pablo Picasso never used night crawlers to get subjects to pose for him or grilled them after painting their portraits.

Tim Perry’s painted fish probably won’t hang in the Louvre Museum, but their anatomical precision and natural beauty are turning heads in the Bacon Free Library.

A lifetime sportsman who never painted anything but his house until a few years ago, the Natick native is showing 13 striking watercolor prints of fish he caught that he made according to a little known Japanese technique called "gyotaku.’’

"I wanted to produce on canvas exactly what Mother Nature gave me,’’ said Perry who works for Natick’s Department of Public Works. "I wanted to be able to remember those fish.’’

Visitors to the library will see gorgeous rubbings of fresh- and saltwater fish that could serve a banquet at Dolphin Seafood in downtown Natick. On view through mid-August, all Perry’s paintings are for sale.

There’s a luminous rainbow trout that took Perry’s bait at the South Natick waterfall. There’s a 27-pound striped bass he caught in Barnstable harbor.

And by the circulation desk, there’s a prehistoric appearing wolf fish that looks like it swam out of Jurassic Park.

Perry remembered, "I caught that one 40 miles out on the Stellwagen Bank. It was 12 pounds and 33 inches long. It was down 90 feet and took me 10 minutes to reel him in.’’

Despite its huge teeth and ferocious face, he said the wolf fish "tasted delicious, like lobster.’’

Perry first learned of the "gyotaku’’ process several years ago while reading "On The Water’’ magazine.

Developed in the 19th century, "gyotaku’’ derives from the Japanese words for "fish’’ and "rubbing.’’

"It’s a new venture. I never painted. I never took a lesson,’’ said the Medway resident. "A taxidermist costs too much. But a painting lasts a lifetime.’’

Perry explained making a "gyotaku’’ print involves several complicated steps which he spent several years learning.

The first and easiest step was catching the fish: encouraged by his late father Wilfred Perry, he began fishing at the age of two and knows local "hot spots’’ that others might drive by.

He has a story about every fish whose image is hanging on the library walls.

Looking at his print of a speckled crappy, Perry recalled fishing in Lake Cochituate with a buddy who fell out of his kayak after leaning too far backwards to reel in a trout.

After catching the fish, his next step is to "wash all the slime off with soap and water.’’

Then he positions the fish on a specially prepared Styrofoam board, draws its outline in pencil and uses a knife "to cut a bed’’ to keep it from slipping.

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Perry said "the hardest thing is to cut out its eye because the smooth surface won’t retain paint.’’ Sometimes he uses small pins to hold its fins, tail or mouth in the position he wants to reproduce.

Before proceeding, Perry refrigerates the fish for a few hours to solidify its surface.

Then using watercolors he’s bought in an art supply store, he paints its entire body, including jaw, gills, fins and tail, aiming to replicate its precise natural colors in all the delicate shades over the entire surface "just like it was alive.’’

He’s taken several years of "trial and error’’ to learn to mix colors to capture the exact look of a sunfish’s scales or the rich sheen of a native brook trout. When he felt watercolors couldn’t depict the iridescence of a bluefish’s gill plates he began experimenting with pastels to get the subtle gradations of color he wanted.

"They just light up. It’s difficult to produce those colors but I’ll figure it out someday,’’ he said.

For Perry, the crucial, make-or-break step comes next.

He very carefully places a sheet of rice paper – known as "shoji’’ in Japan – atop the entire fish and gently presses it over every part of its body so its absorbs the watercolors or pastels.

"You can’t get creases or move the paper even a quarter of an inch,’’ said Perry. "You have to be very careful not to smear it. Or it’ll just be a fishy blob of color.’’

Looking at Perry’s prints of a shiny white perch or a small mouth bass chasing a sunfish, visitors might feel they’re snorkeling beneath the waves of Buzzards Bay.

He’s been teaching his 12-year-old daughter, Meghan, an avid fisherman, to paint what she catches but she still needs a little help placing the rice paper without creases or wrinkles.

"I’ve been fishing with my dad since I was seven so painting them isn’t too hard,’’ said the soon-to-be seventh grader who also enjoys chorus and fashion. "I don’t have steady hands but mine look pretty good, too.’’

Perry places the finished rubbing within a matte and frame that complements its color pattern.

His finished images of fish combine exact anatomical detail and precise coloration presented with an exotic Japanese ambience as if found in an ancient temple.

Perry said he spent a couple of years trying to improve his technique and capture the subtleties of his fishy subjects’ colors. After his wife Cathy encouraged him to exhibit them, he approached the library and found they had space in July and August.

Beyond catching and painting fish, he’s happy to share recipes his father gave him for cooking them. He recalled baking a bluefish for 45 minutes until it was "crisp and tasty’’ and "blackening’’ a striper "over high heat in butter and oil’’ until it was "just delicious.’’